'You must come home,' the old man said firmly. 'It's nearly lunchtime, and while you eat I could find my papers. My wife would never forgive me if I went home this evening and told her I had received a beautiful visitor from Rome and didn't let her cook for her.'
As they walked, Borunna explained that he had known young Hector, as he called him, for years; ever since the Spaniard washed up in Rome in the aftermath of the war. Times were hard then. He himself, a married man in his thirties, had been working as a mason for the Vatican, going around repairing war damage. Often had to go away for days on end. Hector did his best buying up works of art and trying to sell them to the few people left in Europe who had any money. Swiss and Americans, mainly. But even so, it was difficult.
Borunna himself was relatively secure; at the Vatican he had a steady job and a regular income - and not many people in the capital could say that at the time. But everything was in short supply -food, clothing, heating, oil - whether you had money or not. He and di Souza had helped each other as much as possible. He lent money, and Hector reciprocated with gifts.
'What sort of gifts?' she asked.
Borunna looked a little embarrassed. 'Hector was a bit of an entrepreneur, if you see what I mean. He had contacts, and friends and business arrangements with lots of people.'
'You mean the black market?'
He nodded, I suppose. Nothing large scale, mind. Enough to live off and supply the necessities. You're too young to realise what antics we'd get up to then to get hold of half a litre of olive oil.'
'And you bought this stuff from him?'
He shook his head once more. 'Oh, no. Hector always gave what he had freely. He was always a little naughty in business matters, but an enormously generous friend. What was his, was ours. I'd often come home and he and Maria would be there . . .'
'Maria?'
'My wife. She and Hector were like brother and sister. In fact, it was through her that I got to know him. We were all such good friends. And he'd have brought bottles of wine, and salami, and a ham, and sometimes even fresh fruit and he'd lay it all on the table and say, 'Eat, my friends, eat.' And believe me, young lady, we did. Sometimes in return I'd get him to accept a little money. And sometimes I'd do some work for him. I'm afraid desperation led both of us into temptation.'
'You faked stuff for him?'
Borunna looked very awkward at the statement. Even now, he clearly felt guilty about the whole period. Flavia could hardly see why; she'd heard enough stories from her own family to understand what conditions had been like in the post-war debacle. A little light forgery to get some bread or oil or meat seemed hardly a great sin to her.
'Improved. That's the term I prefer. Restored. Hector would occasionally acquire a haul of nineteenth-century sculpture; wood or marble, and I would - ah - add a couple of hundred years on to their age. You know, I'm sure. Turn parts of an 1860s fireplace into a
They'd been walking along the cobbled streets in the warm afternoon sun as they talked, turning from one narrow lane into others even narrower. Flavia was lapping up Borunna's reminiscences with enthusiasm. It was almost like a snapshot of a vanished and innocent age. The two young men and the woman, carousing over a black market salami, a little work here, a little faking there. And who could possibly blame them? Nowadays smuggling and forgery has largely lost its romantic and bohemian air. Like most other forms of crime it's become big business with millions of dollars involved. The rewards are no longer a treasured bottle of chianti, and the motives no longer simple hunger.
But that was all a long time ago. It didn't look as though Borunna had been raking in a small fortune by forging Berninis for di Souza - his home certainly showed no sign of it. To call it humble was an understatement. It was shabby, with only poor sticks of furniture, but the air of modesty was mitigated by an alluring smell of fresh cooking. And dozens of the most beautiful carvings Flavia had ever seen in her life, scattered around like diamonds in a refuse dump.
'Maria. A distinguished guest. Coffee, please,' Borunna called as he ushered her through the heavy green door into the cool, dark interior. By the time he had found the papers, his wife had appeared, about ten years younger than her husband, a woman with an oval face, sparkling eyes that were truly lovely, and a manner of open and total welcome. She set down the tray and gave her husband the sort of embrace you normally give to someone you've not seen for years. How sweet, Flavia thought. Decades of marriage and still devoted. There's hope for us all.
She thanked the woman profusely for the coffee, apologised for disturbing her and declined - with ever growing reluctance - the repeated invitations for lunch.
This is all yours?' she asked, studying some of the pieces scattered around the room.
Borunna looked up from a small mountain of papers in his desk. 'Oh, yes. Practice work, mainly. I did them to get the style before I worked on pieces that would be put on display.'
They're extraordinary.'
Thank you,' he said with simple, genuine pleasure. 'Please, take one you like. There are dozens, and Maria is always complaining how they collect dust. I'd be happy, and honoured, if you gave one a good home. As long as you always remember how young it really is.
Flavia was sorely tempted, but eventually shook her head with equal parts vigour and regret. She would have loved to take one or two for her apartment. Indeed, she already could visualise a small polychromatic Saint Francis sitting on her fireplace. But Bottando, a stickler for such matters, would quite rightly have disapproved. On the other hand, if this case was sorted out fast, with Borunna as uninvolved in this affair as she hoped and increasingly expected, she could come back . . .
'So there you are,' Borunna said when his wife had once more retreated into the aromatic kitchen. 'I knew I'd find it sooner or later. 1952; that was the last time I did any work for him. An arm and a leg. Roman, I think. Perfectly nice but not at all remarkable. It only took me a day or so. Nothing dubious, I assure you; merely patching a few cracks and chips.'
'You have records going that far back?'
The old man looked surprised. 'Of course. Doesn't everybody?'
Being someone who never had the faintest idea how much she had in her bank account, Flavia was frankly astonished.
'I take it you're looking for something in particular?'
'That's right. A bust, purportedly by Bernini. Of Pius V, which Hector was apparently connected with in some way.'
'In what way was this?' There was a sudden caution in his tone, which Flavia instantly noticed. There was something here after all, she thought. The difficulty was going to be getting it out of him.
'We're not certain,' she said. 'One of several possibilities. He bought it, sold it, stole it, smuggled it or had it made. Any, or all, of the above. We just want to know, that's all. Mere interest, quite apart from the fact that the new owner has been murdered. It crossed my mind that maybe Hector . . .'
'. . . was up to his old tricks? Is that what you think? That I forged a bust for him?'
Flavia felt guilty even though Borunna's admissions made him a legitimate suspect. 'Well, that sort of thing. Could you have done it if he'd asked?'
'Fake a Bernini? Oh, yes. Very simple. Well, not so simple, in fact, but perfectly possible. It's the design that's the thing. Get that right and it's simple. Pius V, you say?'
She nodded.
'Of course, you know there's a bronze copy in Copenhagen. So it would mainly be a copying job. Sculpting it would be straightforward, the only difficulty would be getting marble from the right quarry, and ageing it so it didn't look too new. Again, not that difficult.'
It was curious, she thought later; he took on board the practicality of forging a Bernini with no surprise at all. Very knowledgeable, as well. Not even Alberghi's report in the Borghese had mentioned a bronze copy in Copenhagen.
'Why do you think it was faked?' he went on.
'I don't; we don't know. It's a possibility. We don't know where it came from, that's all. It just turned up.'
